Thank You
by Decotex
Summary: The Doctor doesn't have many friends left. Doctor/OC fluff.


It was five past midnight on Friday night.

The fog had spilled over the mountains and down the cliffs, and was now coating the little suburban town like the web of a particularly lazy spider. On a passenger jet overhead, a businessman on his way home to see his kids after two months overseas happened to glance down and take in the view. After a moment of sleepy observation, he mused that the white and yellow lights illuminated the fog like … as if … He paused a moment to think. Glow-in-the-dark cotton candy, he finally decided, as his mind slipped away into a peaceful slumber. It is admittedly not the most poetic description of fog, but we can excuse it for now.

A mile or so to the east, a deer stumbled onto a mountain road. It pecked at a bush aimlessly for a few seconds, and then, feeling the ground rumble beneath its hooves, crossed to the other side of the road. The fog spit out a speeding black jeep, which narrowly missed the deer. Then the fog engulfed it again and the only sign it had ever existed were some disturbed air molecules and an equally disturbed deer. Turn your brights on, jackass, the deer mumbled. Or it would have mumbled, if it were human and had taken driver's ed. As it was, the deer tilted its head mindlessly and wandered off.

But nestled in the deepest recess of the valley, near the center of the town, a little white house with a little white fence sat oblivious to every and all movements of the outside world. And nestled in the deepest recesses of her bed, under a thick layer of sheets and comforters, a girl too lay oblivious to the comings and goings of local weather.

Anna was dreaming.

It was one of those sweet little dreams that don't contain anything significant and slip out of your mind the moment they're over, and are thus just a polite extension of your day.

This particular dream was playing out like a low-budget short film; no real plot, little dialogue, just a stream of visuals that could be interpreted in many ways, or not at all. Anna's subconscious didn't mind much.

There was a sound. Normally, Anna was a deep sleeper, but this particular sound resonated somewhere deep in the back of her head, reverberated forward, and pushed open her eyes. She lay still, unsure exactly where her dream had ended and the real world had butted in. And then, from the darkness, a voice.

"I say, it is dark in here."

Anna smiled to herself and, checking to make sure she was fully dressed (she was), slid off the covers and flipped on the bedside lamp. The TARDIS was occupying the only space in her room not already occupied by books, leaving the Doctor so little room to stand that when he moved his already clumsy figure, he knocked a few paperbacks off of a shelf. He stared down at them sadly but made no effort to pick them back up.

"Sorry," he said, to either Anna or the books.

"You could call, you know. So I'd have time to clean up. And, you know. Get dressed."

"Sorry," he echoed. "I was just wondering, if maybe, you want to, I don't know." He trailed off.

When enough time had passed to convince Anna he was not going to continue, she prompted,  
"Go somewhere?"

"Maybe. If you want. I don't know, I just wanted to go somewhere else. And now I am somewhere else, but you were already here, so if you want to go somewhere else then we could. Go somewhere else." The words rushed out in a directionless, melancholy way, like a confused drip of water haphazardly making its way down a windowpane.

"Doctor," Anna said, trying to remain calm. "Just tell me, straight up; are we going to die?"

"What? Why would you say that?" For a being who was supposed to retain the infinite knowledge of the universe, the Doctor was confused remarkably often.

"Well, I haven't seen you in months, and then all of a sudden you show up in my room, in the middle of the night, acting all weird. And with you, life-or-death situations pop up every other day. So, what is it? Is something bad going to happen?"

"No, no." The Doctor waved his hand vaguely. "Not anymore. It's just sort of … the aftermath, you know?"

She didn't. But she nodded anyway. The waited in silence.

"Could you do me a favor?" he said finally.

"Possibly."

"Could I sleep here tonight?"

She looked at him.

"Um."

"Oh I meant," he said hurriedly. "Not like that. If there's a couch or something, I don't know. I don't mean to impose."

It finally dawned on Anna that the Doctor was asking for help, and not the check-for-Daleks-while-I-sonic-this-door-open kind of help; the particularly human brand of help where you give someone a cup of hot chocolate, wrap them in your fuzziest blanket, and watch Disney movies with them all night. Anna, who had some experience with this sort of help, knew that the first rule was not to pry. So she didn't. Instead, she swallowed her questions and concentrated on the problem at hand. The Doctor, who had no experience with this sort of help, stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed, tapping his fingers together.

"My parents are home. They might not like to wake up and find a strange man sleeping in our living room."

"Parents," the Doctor sighed.

" … But if you want, you can sleep on the floor next to my bed. I've got some pillows and stuff," she offered uncertainly, afraid that the floor was not an adequate sleeping place for the most feared being of the cosmos.

She needn't have worried.

The Doctor smiled for the first time and nodded, obviously relieved.

"Yes, could I? That would be brilliant. I'll just take care of the TARDIS, then, shall I?" He turned, knocking a few books over in the process, and stepped into the TARDIS.

Anna grabbed a few blankets and pillows from her closet and laid them out on the floor as neatly as possible, shoving wayward books aside with her foot. Then, she left her room and tiptoed to the kitchen.

When Anna returned a few minutes later, carrying a mug of hot chocolate, the TARDIS was gone. She didn't think too hard about where the Doctor had put it, since space and time mechanics were confusing and she was tired. The Doctor was sitting cross-legged on the makeshift bed in bright blue nightclothes, clutching her pink stuffed seal plushie. It would have been funny, except for the lost-puppy look on the Doctor's face and the way he held the stuffed seal to his chest; like he was worried it would leave. He looked up and quickly smiled when she entered.

"Anna, great, thank you. Is that for me? You shouldn't have." He took a sip and then set the cup under the bed delicately, so as not to further disturb the books.

Anna climbed back into bed and turned off the light. They lay in a peaceful silence for a while; the kind of silence between friends that know nothing needs to be said. And then, just as Anna was drifting back to sleep:

"Anna?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for this."

"Anytime."


End file.
